Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Strange Things I Have Seen

At the Science Museum in London on Saturday I visited an exhibit called "Dan Dare & the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain." Dan was a 1950s English comic book hero, devoid of superpowers but possessed of that plucky can-do spirit that the British so love. The exhibit nicely integrated the futuristic comics with the strides the UK made as it pulled itself out of its post-WWII doldrums. There were examples of "modern" design and objects from the early high-tech sector. Among the artifacts on display in a section on Britain's airplane industry was this sign:

There's really nothing exceptional about this paper bag, which I snapped hanging in the bathroom of the lodgings I stayed in in Cambridge last month. And yet it seemed to be begging for deconstruction.

PHS is a provider of "washroom services." "Disposal Bag," well that's sort of redundant isn't it? It's the drawing that struck me most. How best to illustrate the bag's true purpose: to dispose of certain feminine hygiene products? With a woman, obviously. But a bare-shouldered woman in an antebellum hoop skirt, the front pulled up coquettishly, exposing a single foot? Does that say tampon to you?

Just as it would have been too much to replace "Parking Inadvisable" with "No Parking," so the people at PHS can't bring themselves to replace "Disposal Bag" with "For the Disposal of Feminine Hygiene Products."

You Spin Me Right RoundI'm getting obsessed with capturing the world around me in all its mundane glory. Or should that be glorious mundanity? Watch this video and you be the judge:

Apart from those that are kept in stately homes, of course. Elephants that is. The trousers were watertight, which is a benefit. The inclement weather related to a private indisposition. I once travelled to Bangladesh, where I saw toads mating. There are chain stores in Bangladesh, I'm informed.

About Me

I'm a journalist from Washington, D.C. In September 2007 I moved my family and our dog to Oxford, England, where I studied citizen journalism, a buzzword which basically applies to anyone who isn't like me doing what it is that I do. Now I'm back Stateside. This blog is basically a compendium of my writings in England. I'll be starting a new one soon about Washington.